


Speed

by NancyBrown



Category: Justice League & Justice League Unlimited (Cartoons)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Trick or Treat 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2015-10-20
Packaged: 2018-04-27 05:39:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5035945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NancyBrown/pseuds/NancyBrown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A variation on the end of "Divided We Fall." Wally is trapped in the Speed Force, and it's John who reaches in after him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Speed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BlueManta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueManta/gifts).



> Written for Blue Manta in Trick or Treat 2015

Everything is clear inside the Speed Force. Wally's mind, always racing just like the rest of him, zooms through his own thoughts so fast he's finally standing perfectly still, a quick, hot flame frozen in one quantum state. He's a fossilized lightning bolt, a dust mote in ice. He's a single electron without spin. He's...lonely.

He remembers this feeling from when he'd take the weekend shift at the old Watchtower, floating above the Earth all by himself. Sure, he could play his tunes as loud as he wanted, and he could look at anything on the Internet Batman hadn't figured out how to block. But the loneliness killed. He'd make up the smallest alerts as excuses. The scowling look John gave him when he showed up in a blaze of green over a tiny sensor glitch was worth it every time. Instead of one lonely atom drifting in space, they'd be two ions bouncing off each other, and that was worth everything.

"Wally!" The shout is from across time and another galaxy, a worried cry in Shayera's voice, with the echo of J'onn's mind wrapping around the plaintive word.

Wally reaches out with what used to be his hand. On the other end of nowhere, his fingers clasp another set of digits, entwining light years away from his heart.

He remembers hands. Wally squeezes. "It's so beautiful here," he thinks, and he wonders if they know. He can feel the hand holding his squeezing back. Shayera's hands are strong, but the one holding his is stronger. The glitter of atoms which used to be his face break into a warm smile. John has reached into the Speed Force for him, and the strength in his arm is anchored by the love of the others flowing through him and into what remains of Wally.

Physics was never his strength. A sparkle of who he was laughs at the memory of falling asleep during a Physics lecture back in college, and waking to his professor's eraser ricocheting off his head. He can't remember what the prof looked like, and his memory substitutes John's face: they share the same level of pissed-off annoyance undercut by deep fondness. The guy he was back then wouldn't comprehend the vectoring equations brimming through his cells now, channeling momentum and matter and time in a looping ever-forward velocity. 

He tells John, "There's this force, a Speed Force. It's calling me home. I have to go now."

"You've got to come back to us," he hears John say, and he hears the words under them. He hears the Earth-orbiting loneliness, and he can feel John's own singular electron tilting towards a matching spin. It's the most beautiful sight Wally has ever perceived.

He can feel the tug of them on his arm, which stretches out past nebulae. He senses the delicate balance. One quark in the wrong direction, and his friends will tumble into the Speed Force with him. While Wally was always meant for this, they will die.

He loves them too much to let that happen.

Wally lets go, lets the last thing he feels be the fleeting pressure of John's fingers sliding against his as they fall away. He can't hear them calling for him. He knows, though.

Alone in the Speed Force, body extended past the dark matter on the far end of the universe, Wally pulses, and he sighs, and he dissolves utterly away.


End file.
